Blacklit Jellyfist

Night's blind corner and,

ghosts fall downturned into a

child's faint closing hand. 

Keats, Severn, Nocturne - Helen Humphreys

"In that room where there was no writing and no reading, Severn sketched the dying man, in fact made some of the finest drawings of the poet when he was on his deathbed. Perhaps Severn's sketching was a comforting presence to Keats. Art, although no longer of urgent relevance to his world, would have been his familiar. 

Severn, afraid that he'd fall asleep one night and that Keats would wake to darkness and think that he had died, devised a system so that the poet would have continuous light. He fastened a piece of thread from the bottom of one candle to the wick of another, and in its guttering state the dying flame would ignite the thread and travel up it to ignite the wick of the next candle. 

It is said that John Keats awoke at the exact moment the flame was travelling up the thread from one candle to another, and that in his excitement at witnessing the spectacle, he woke Severn to tell him of the success of his invention. 

At the end, we are all far from home. We are far from home, and what we hope for is that someone will fashion us a light, so that we will not have to wake in darkness."

                                                   ~ Helen Humphreys, Nocturne

On The Subject of Gardens

Miracles and Horror

“It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.”
- Nadine Gordimer

Hemingway - A Moveable Feast

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Hang Time

To leap headlong,

into the spaces between words.

On Longing

Crooked and spent, 

a wayward pull. 

The final imprint of light,

on the insides of eyelids,

before dark. 

To Combat Cold Weather, One Looks at Warmer Photos

La Jolla. 

The ocean's grab and draw.

Fine salt on the tongue.

Port Dalhousie in Winter